AT&T invested $325 million in Denver’s network

AT&T added new outdoor LTE antennas up in Arapahoe Basin this winter. Skiers used up 440 GBs in December 2014. Photo courtesy of AT&T

In three years, AT&T said it has invested $325 million in the Denver metro area to improve its cellular network. That includes 14 new LTE sites in Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins last year.

Statewide, the company dropped $550 million in total investment between 2012 to 2014, which included 226 network upgrades ranging from new cell sites to more capacity.

The investment may be more noticeable in the outskirts of Denver. AT&T added coverage using outdoor distributed antenna systems at area ski resorts including Beaver Creek, Steamboat Springs, Arapahoe Basin, Vail Mountain and Aspen Meadow Resort. It also built 126 new LTE sites in Alamosa, Dillon, Evergreen, Grand Junction and Pueblo.

AT&T customer who have skied at any of those resorts this winter have probably noticed (have you?) the change. Some stats: AT&T says that at A-Basin, such as, the new systems tripled capacity. In December, customers at A-Basin used more than 440 GB of mobile data.

In the Town of Vail, 8,176 GB of data were used in December 2014.

And in Aspen during the X-Games, customers used 677 GBs of data — just on AT&T’s network at Buttermilk Mountain.

The investment should boost AT&T’s reliability in Denver. In the second half of last year, AT&T ranked third for reliability and overall performance, according to RootMetrics, an independent research firm that drives around cities to test signal strength. Verizon took the top spot with T-Mobile in second.

But all four companies scored fairly well with first-place Verizon at 96.6 and fourth-place Sprint at 92.3.

In July 2011, however, RootMetrics rated the area’s wireless service providers much lower. Verizon, which again came in at the top, scored an 88. Second place T-Mobile was at 60.5. AT&T and Sprint rounded out the bottom with scores of 47.8 and 41.8, respectively. At the time, RootMetrics noted: “AT&T recorded the highest dropped call rate of any carrier, at 2.55%.”

AT&T said it couldn’t comment on future investment, but a spokeswoman said, “We are constantly assessing the needs of our Colorado communities.”

And for those who are wondering where the LTE sites are, AT&T provided us a list of the 14 new ones in the metro-ish area:

Tamara Chuang covers personal technology and local tech news for The Denver Post. She previously spent 10 years doing the same thing for The Orange County Register before taking a hiatus to move here and become a SAHM to a precocious toddler.